Trainer road for structured training

dahat

It would be handy if TrainerRoad continue to develop the platform to be a one stop shop as I'm paying for TP as well. I'd love to have it all in one place.

Has anyone a guide on setting TSS score for different stages of training? It's hard to know what's too much or too little TSS per week.

sullzz

dahat wrote: »

I'd say i was bang on the money then!

I dropped 30 watts ftp with 6 weeks off but i got it back fairly quickly i reckon so my next assessment will be interesting.

Did you do the ramp test on a non smart turbo?

No I did it on a standard turbo with Power meter pedals .

sullzz

dahat wrote: »

It would be handy if TrainerRoad continue to develop the platform to be a one stop shop as I'm paying for TP as well. I'd love to have it all in one place.

What are you using TP for ? Is it just to analyze power ? Check out Golden Cheetah !!

dahat

sullzz wrote: »

What are you using TP for ? Is it just to analyze power ? Check out Golden Cheetah !!

For fancy graphs!!!! Its easy navigate and has a decent mobile app.

My laptop is woeful and work lappy won't allow me install any programs as I've no administration access. Do I need full admin access to install it?

doozerie

dahat wrote: »

It would be handy if TrainerRoad continue to develop the platform to be a one stop shop as I'm paying for TP as well. I'd love to have it all in one place.

Has anyone a guide on setting TSS score for different stages of training? It's hard to know what's too much or too little TSS per week.

I briefly considered subscribing to TP, after I bought my Wahoo Bolt (since Wahoo are closely tied to TP), but I never delved into it properly.

From what I understand, TP is good at analysing your sessions but from my limited reading it seemed like a big chunk of that was calculating stuff you could easily calculate yourself anyway, such as ATL, CTL. Having said that, I have regular/free TP account and after my Bolt automatically uploads a ride to it I get notified if my threshold HR has changed, so I may be oblivious to a lot of analysis that TP is doing.

I'd be interested to know what you find useful in TP?

Re TSS, you could perhaps look at one of the TrainerRoad training plans and see the TSS that they amount to each week, as a reference. Assuming you thought the plan suited your purposes you could aim for a similar TSS each week if following your own plan

dahat

I have all the info but analysing it is my downfall, sometimes I wonder if I'm just wasting money on TP Premium as I can manage my sessions without it due to having a fair idea on my hr & power levels at different times etc.

I'm currently at 600-900 TSS (4 weeks) with a recovery week due next week as I'm hoping to race on Sept 15th.

That TSS comes from VO2, threshold, 2hr Z2 then Saturday spin (no plan just easy ish) then a Sunday club spin that is usually Z2/Z3 with bursts here n there.

Macy0161

I've actually stopped my training peaks sub the next time it comes up. Now I'm focussed more on the bike trainer road is enough, and they're working on bringing in cross training as well.

joey100

Thought I'd ask in here rather than starting a new thread. How do people find erg mode with trainer road? Been using trainer road for years and have had a wahoo kickr (gen 1) but never used it on erg mode until last night. Maybe it was my expectations were off but found it didn't really settle on the intervals. Resistance wasn't consistent, even with me holding the same cadence found there could be little slips in it and would take me 20-30 seconds to get it back right again, would vary 10-15 watts either side of the target (around 220w) at times, not a huge amount but enough that it was annoying. Anyone else experienced this? Is it normal enough?

nordicb

Kickr snap gen 1 here and it is spot on in erg mode. 10-15W suggests, perhaps, it wasn't in erg mode properly.
I may be wrong, but trainerroad switches off erg mode if cadence comes to a halt, because spinning the flywheel from dead stop when resistance is high is nearly impossible. Need to make sure you have no other apps trying to control it, for example wahoo app and trainerroad simultaneously. Trainerroad displays ERG mode at the bottom of the screen. If you are connecting with ANT+, devices need to be fairly close from each other and nothing in between.

The only gripe I have sometimes is that intervals may kick in few seconds late and finish late too, in other words, what's on display is a little out of sync with the actual resistance, but only at times. It is especially noticeable if cadence changes before starting and finishing interval, as if kickr tries to modulate the resistance ignoring software requests at those short moments.

joey100

The cadence would be staying the same throughout, so last night was around 84, but every now and again the power would drop by 10-15 watts or let me go 10-15 watts above, by the end it averaged out at the target power over the length of the interval. No other apps going at same time, only trainer road and the bike is nearly on top of the laptop. Have just remembered though have had issues with wifi losing connection and then re-connecting after few seconds so I wonder if this has something to do with it? I know they are communicating through bluetooth but might be an issue maybe?

nordicb

I'm sure you have the latest firmware on kickr and latest trainerroad...
It does sound like a connection drop out, a bit, except that when it happens to me, the resistance goes very light, but I use ANT+ dongle as laptop has no BLE.
It is known WiFi to interfere with ANT+ signal, but not bluetooth... WiFi can be completely off when using trainerroad if it helps.

I think trainerroad has an option to smooth power reading, set in seconds.
Wahoo app has a setting to smooth power in erg mode on kickr, which is on by default.

Macy0161

I've only recently gone smart turbo (hammer in my case) and started using erg mode. The advice I picked up was smoothing at around 5 seconds, and inner ring and middle of the block, for erg mode. Only had a couple of issues - one drop out and one occasion where either the box or turbo seemed to freeze at the end of an interval.

I use an Android TV box, and an Ant+ dongle on a short extension. But iirc if you have both Ant+ and Bluetooth open I think TrainerRoad picks whatever it thinks is best? They have mentioned interference a few times on the podcast and the facebook group - microwaves seem particularly problematic, even several rooms away!

Incidentally, the calendar function has launched in Beta.

doozerie

For each interval my erg-mode trainer (Tacx Neo) ramps up 2 seconds before the interval starts, and ramps down again 2 seconds before it ends. It's the TrainerRoad app that is controlling this, so I'd imagine it's the very same for any trainer. So for intervals where I have to maintain or increase my cadence I increase my cadence in the last 3 or 4 seconds before the interval starts so that I don't hit a "wall" of resistance.

Certainly for the Neo I've seen discussions about older versions of the firmware having various bugs which resulted in the resistance not being stable/consistent throughout the interval. I don't experience that with mine, on the latest firmware, but I do notice that if I'm not pedalling smoothly then the resistance varies as it adjusts. An example of that is where I keep my cadence the same but don't maintain roughly the same pressure on the pedals throughout the revolution - I've seen this in detail when using dual power meter pedals on the bike on the turbo, my cadence figure didn't change (but remember it's an averaged figure so the displayed figure doesn't capture brief peaks and troughs), but my power distribution varied across the pedals as one leg eased off at a time, the brief resistance changes seemed in line with my actual power output in so far as I could tell for such short periods in a strenuous interval.

nordicb

Perhaps the reason we see this on and off delay is because trainerroad magnifies their 5 second interval display into half of the screen width. Due to smoothing, it is often 5 second bursts never get to the power target as it takes longer than 5 seconds to ramp up and down, depending on the target power. I saw same thing on Sufferfest, their The Shovel video has 200%+ FTP bumps, but for very short. PS: It's my favourite video of theirs and I find it very hard, going at FTP effort after it feels really easy!

dahat

OP, how have you found TrainerRoad so far?

sullzz

dahat wrote: »

OP, how have you found TrainerRoad so far?

Yeah Dahat , loving it so far . Although I’m only on a base phase at the moment I’m starting to feel a lot of my fitness has returned since starting it .
The on screen text was great at first and gave great tips at the start like for pedaling technique etc . but I’m considering turning it off as it’s really distracting .

Shoco83

I find the Bluetooth connection to be more stable than the ant+ connection and would rarely have a power drop. Also when there's an interval the Bluetooth seems to hit the power target a lot quicker than the ant+

Think I have some free trials if anyone wants one

dahat

sullzz wrote: »

Yeah Dahat , loving it so far . Although I’m only on a base phase at the moment I’m starting to feel a lot of my fitness has returned since starting it .
The on screen text was great at first and gave great tips at the start like for pedaling technique etc . but I’m considering turning it off as it’s really distracting .

You'll be all dressed up with nowwhere to go in few weeks (like myself now).

sullzz

dahat wrote: »

You'll be all dressed up with nowwhere to go in few weeks (like myself now).

You not coming up for the Lucan GP ?

dahat

sullzz wrote: »

You not coming up for the Lucan GP ?

No, handicap race didn't appeal to me. If it was a straight A3 i would have travelled alright.

I'm hoping to get reassigned to A4 next year under appeal so a freak result in a handicap race wouldn't have helped my cause at all.

sullzz

dahat wrote: »

No, handicap race didn't appeal to me. If it was a straight A3 i would have travelled alright.

I'm hoping to get reassigned to A4 next year under appeal so a freak result in a handicap race wouldn't have helped my cause at all.

Sure you’ll be back up in no time !! Stay away from the madness .

dahat

sullzz wrote: »

Sure you’ll be back up in no time !! Stay away from the madness .

A man has to have a plan! id like to try get fitness in A4 then be ready for A3 but that is dependant on a few things.

sullzz

dahat wrote: »

No, handicap race didn't appeal to me. If it was a straight A3 i would have travelled alright.

I'm hoping to get reassigned to A4 next year under appeal so a freak result in a handicap race wouldn't have helped my cause at all.

Here ye go, maybe a final gallop for you after all.
https://www.facebook.com/182274711787785/posts/2342791589069409/

dahat

sullzz wrote: »

Here ye go, maybe a final gallop for you after all.
https://www.facebook.com/182274711787785/posts/2342791589069409/

Passed here as well... I'll race a Sportive Sunday for thrills!

Regarding the ramp test, does it need 2/3 days rest beforehand to get a satisfactory result?

Chumpski

dahat wrote: »

Passed here as well... I'll race a Sportive Sunday for thrills!

Regarding the ramp test, does it need 2/3 days rest beforehand to get a satisfactory result?

1 rest day is enough. Its very short and only truly hard for about 4 minutes, gut it out and good luck.

dahat

Chumpski wrote: »

1 rest day is enough. Its very short and only truly hard for about 4 minutes, gut it out and good luck.

Perfect then, I'm curious to see where I think my ftp is at after testing as to what I i think it is myself.

Miklos

dahat wrote: »

No, handicap race didn't appeal to me. If it was a straight A3 i would have travelled alright.

I'm hoping to get reassigned to A4 next year under appeal so a freak result in a handicap race wouldn't have helped my cause at all.

You're off your rocker trying to get back in to A4!

I've been grovelling in A3 since an upgrade in May but there's no way I'd go back, gotta keep looking forwards.

dahat

Miklos wrote: »

You're off your rocker trying to get back in to A4!

I've been grovelling in A3 since an upgrade in May but there's no way I'd go back, gotta keep looking forwards.

I'd love a crack at one particular race as an A4 early in the season. If i get get i downgrade it would be with pts i'd imagine so a second upgrade would happen.

It may or may not happen but either way i've got to plan to be an A3 next year so sorting out the issues i have is a priority this winter.

Whyner

dahat wrote: »

I'm hoping to get reassigned to A4 next year under appeal so a freak result in a handicap race wouldn't have helped my cause at all.

Care to elaborate?

Macy0161

dahat wrote: »

Perfect then, I'm curious to see where I think my ftp is at after testing as to what I i think it is myself.

During beta testing, when I was having "poor" results* compared to the 20 minute test, they told me you should be rested. Or at least not going in fatigued. In the plans, it does always follow an easy/ recovery week.

*just ego. I couldn't complete all, particularly VO2 Max, using my 20 minute result. When I accepted the ramp test, I could...